Getting excited for 'The LEGO Movie' … No, really

Wednesday

Jun 19, 2013 at 5:00 PMJun 19, 2013 at 5:58 PM

If the Marvel comics superhero movie “Avengers” proved anything, it's that people like seeing a bunch of their favorite heroes all in one film. Indeed, DC Comics and its corporate parent, Warner Bros., hopes to duplicate the success of “Avengers” with a recently green-lit “Justice League” film, spinning out of the successful “Man of Steel” film and including Batman, Wonder Woman and probably the Flash and Green Lantern, among others.

This impulse to put all of our heroes in one story — recently and brilliantly satirized by Patton Oswald in his improvised proposal for the next “Star Wars” film — is nothing new. It's the same impulse that had DC and Marvel Comics throw their heroes together in “super hero team” comics such as “Justice League” and “Avengers” in the first place. It's probably the same impulse that, in antiquity, had Greeks putting their favorite heroes from mythology into one team, The Argonauts.

It's an easy impulse to understand if you've ever been a kid with action figures. You don't overly care if they're “Star Wars” figures, Marvel Comics figures or Transformers. It makes perfect sense for Boba Fett and Spider-Man to team up against Megatron. Totally. (Because, for some reason, Boba Fett always becomes a good guy when you're playing with action figures. I have no idea why that is.)

In any case, this childlike impulse to play with all your toys at once is what makes “The LEGO movie,” scheduled to be released in February, perhaps the most gleefully exciting movie in memory:

The plot, so much as can be discerned from a trailer, puts a number of Legos from various sets the toy company has released all in one movie, including The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the 2002 NBA All-Stars, a mermaid, a green ninja and — most exciting — Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. That's right, this film — released by Warner Bros. — puts DC's big three heroes in the same film before the “Justice League” film is even written!

Of course, it could only be better if characters from Marvel or other franchises were in the film, but that's unlikely. Still, a soon-to-be-released “LEGO Marvel Super Heroes” video game puts together the members of The Avengers, the X-Men and Spider-Man all in one story — characters that have been separated on the big screen by conflicting film rights: